AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 149 



MTRICA — (Linnaeus called the genus,) 

 Is found at the expense of the great group the Amentacea Catkins (Birch) 

 establishing the passage from the Betulaceae to the Casuarinacese (Beef- 

 woods), approximation to the Conifera, found in Australia. The natives 

 make war clubs of the wood ; it looks in color like raw beef. 



It grows as a shrub as well as a tree. Its flowers are dioique, the males 

 haviug from four to eight stamina and a hypogenous scale, naked internally ; 

 the females have ovaries surmounted by a simple stylus and two stigmata. 

 We call the plant Myrica. Theophrastus called it (2100 years ago) Tamarit. 

 The name Myrica is from the Grreek Tiiurike, that from muron, perfume. 

 One of them yields wax. 



THE ANECOCHILFS. 



On the lofty mountains of the East Indies and the Moluccas, we have 

 found a plant under the shade of trees, in a humid air, a small plant whose 

 leaves have a surprisingly brilliant color. The natives call it PetoLa, bj 

 which they mean a cloth of silk of brilliant color. It has been taken to 

 Europe, and Mons. Blume has called it (at Leyden), genus Anecochilus. 



FOOD. 



The substance of the following paper was submitted at the London So- 

 ciety of Arts in January last, 1859. 



On the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, a lank, lithe, wire-haired, dark-look- 

 ing, black-eyed race of men ride constantly on horseback, and feed on the 

 flesh of animals, but chiefly beef, roasted with the hot blood in it, by fires 

 of dried dung, if allowed to get cold it becomes tough. Horses, mules, 

 deer, have sweet flavor when eaten fresh. A man will devour at a squat- 

 ting, without salt or vegetable, four or more pounds of it. At intervals of 

 four to five years a drought occurs, the grass is destroyed, and the neigh- 

 bhorhood of the dried up streams becomes a cattle Golgotha, thus manu- 

 ring the land for the next rains. Natiire deals in compensatioiis in Chili; 

 meat is a luxury of the wealthy, while the laborer feeds on dried beans and 

 bread when they can get it. Chili is a Landocracy, and the small tenants 

 store up their scanty potatoes, pumpkins, beans, red pepper and onions, with 

 wheat, if they can. In years long past, one shilling a bushel standing, two 

 shillings a bushel after reaping, and four shillings in the mid interval be- 

 tween season and season. One year, known as the flood, on account of 

 heavy rains, the crops usually grown by irrigation, failed by blight, the 

 price rose to six shillings ; the poor people sold all their best wheat and 

 saved the worst for seed. Next year the price rose to twenty shillings a 

 bushel, $5.00. And in this, the garden of the Pacific, that used to supply 

 all Peru with breadstuff's, large numbers of people were reduced to eat 

 wild herbage and seaweed ; maay perished. Then for the first time bar- 

 relled flour was received round Cape Horn from the United States. Chili 

 prays for snow, 7iot for rain^ for when the mountains have plenty of that 

 the streams from them make the wheat on the plains. The lowest level 



